Chicago Tribune to cut 120 positions

Phil RosenthalTribune media columnist

The Chicago Tribune, challenged by weaker-than-expected first-half financial results, plans to eliminate around 120 positions from the newspaper's workforce of about 3,000, Publisher and Chief Executive David Hiller said Thursday.

No decision has been made on exactly how many jobs each department and operation will lose, Hiller said. But, he said, 40 or so jobs have been vacant and left unfilled since the beginning of the year, meaning roughly 80 more will be deemed unnecessary and eliminated in the coming months.

"We would hope to have most of this decided by Labor Day .. and, as much as possible, completed," said Hiller, who did not give a dollar figure for the savings the cutbacks represent.

Managing Editor James O'Shea said he didn't have a ballpark figure for how many newsroom positions will be lost.

"We're working through the numbers now, and we're trying to see if we can avoid layoffs," O'Shea said.

The latest cutbacks follow 80 to 90 Chicago Tribune positions eliminated at the end of 2005, and parent Tribune Co.'s promise in May to trim $200 million in costs companywide over the next two years to help finance a $2.5 billion stock buyback.

"Our reason to try to speed up our action on the cost side has to do with our Chicago Tribune results in the first half of the year, which were well weaker than we had planned," Hiller said in an interview. "The cost savings as part of the $200 million that were planned over time, what we're doing is accelerating some of that ... accelerating cost reductions that otherwise would have been next year."

However, Hiller said, the newspaper will be investing where it sees growth potential, including Internet operations and its free paper, Red Eye. He cited a $75 million upgrade at the paper's Freedom Center printing facility, which he said will enable the Tempo feature section to print the night before delivery starting this fall rather than a day in advance, as it now is.

"That will be great for readers, but it costs money," Hiller said.

Hiller acknowledged "these things are hard and painful" for employees, "but we're not facing anything that anybody in the rest of the media industry or, frankly, the rest of American industry, isn't."